Reel 10: June 21, 1961/Transcript
This is the official transcript for the episode which can also be accessed for free at'' patreon.com/withinthewires''Timothy, Did you see the portrait Bernice sent? It's an original oil painting of Vivienne holding our cat, Constance. I'm not sure you've met Constance. She hides when we have guests over. She doesn't trust strangers. Timothy, you have to see this painting. Bernice even had it framed for us - the shipping costs must have been enormous. The frame is exquisite, genuine oak, with these intricate corner details. Hand-carved lilacs. The artist captured Vivi's majestic hair perfectly, and her smile… so constrained like it's holding back a laugh. And little Connie, she just melt's into Vivi's lap, like a candle. So happy and safe with mom. Timothy, could you hang the painting above my desk later today? Do it when I'm at lunch. # # # Timothy, take a letter to Amy Castillo, Director of New Education Initiatives, North American Department of Childhood Development. June 21, 1961 Dearest Amy, I was thinking of you the other day. Vivienne and I finally bought an espresso machine for our home. They make them a bit smaller now, but it still takes up most of our kitchen counter. We have morning coffee and read the paper every day. It reminded me of us. Of you and me. Back in the Chicago office. Vivienne's turned out to be very good at making coffee - do you know it doesn’t have to be that bitter? She’s even been using the milk foam to draw little hearts and trees on the tops of our mugs. When I try it looks like a rock or a lump of mashed potatoes. Vivienne had a second child, by the way. I think this will be the last one. She's getting older, and this new kid was... difficult. I mean, the birth was difficult, but also - I don’t know. It was all just harder. The pregnancy center here in Toronto was top-notch really, but the consultant was a lot less friendly than Dr. Wood in Chicago. No one seemed to care that Vivi had a life outside of her pregnancy, that she had a husband waiting at home. I had to spend 6 months with almost no contact with my wife. She was diagnosed with a heart condition - a mild one, don’t worry - and they kept her more isolated while they treated it. Although despite the extra treatment, they couldn’t even tell us if the condition was caused by the birth, or just revealed by it. She's doing fine now, but… she found it difficult to let the new baby go. She grew quite attached to her. The little girl would be about 3 now,, and still… Sometimes I overhear Vivi making calls to government offices trying to track her down. She knows the repopulation contract stipulations, but I guess on some level they just don’t matter to her. For all of the science and morality behind dissolving tribalism, you just can’t quell motherly instincts. Part of the reason for writing you, Amy, is that I never said thank you. Nearly seven years since we parted ways, and I think I never thanked you for saving me. I know you denied putting those original Vancouver files in my home, but come on. I think we've let enough time pass that we can both admit what we know. It's disappointing, of course, to know that Vishwathi walked away with little more than a slap on the wrist. What a bad cliche. If they had actually slapped Vishwathi's wrist, that would have been a greater punishment than the one they gave her. A fine, my ass. Not even a big one. It took 4 years to bring her to trial, and even then, they didn’t prosecute her for document forgeries. They just said “Bad Secretary! No!” and let her return to her post, with a tiny bit of new oversight. To tell you the truth, when I heard she would be as free and and as powerful as she always was, I was concerned. Afraid even. About my job. Not to mention my cat and my wife. But Vishwathi was surprisingly cordial to me. She acted as if nothing had happened. She held no grudge. Vivienne laughed at me when I told her. She said "Of course she doesn't hold a grudge. You did nothing wrong. You're the one who's supposed to have the grudge, Michael." In fact, at a summit in 1959, Vishwathi spoke to the Board of Governance. She gave a speech. She lauded the incredible work of Sima Choudary and Sarah Chisholm to revitalize the war-torn buildings in Washington. It's well-deserved of course, the public housing and job creation there has been unmatched anywhere in the world since the New Society formed. But here’s the unsettling part. At the end of Vishwathi's speech, she said my name. "And none of this would have been possible without the vision and dedication of Michael Witten," she said. I was sitting about 15 rows deep on the floor - trying to get some reading done, if I’m honest; the speeches were, well, tedious - when I heard my name. I looked up, and there was Vishwathi, teary-eyed and smiling on the rostrum, her palm stretched outward, directly at me. Somehow she knew exactly where I was amid the mass of bureaucrats. With a slight twist and a twitch of her wrist, I was compelled to stand. As the applause boomed around me, I saw Vishwathi's hands clasped together, over her heart, her eyes shining in motherly pride. Amy, I must tell you, even now I don’t know how to parse that moment. Other than to feel that it was simultaneously the proudest moment of my career, and the most unnerving. I don't know how the Department of Childhood Development has been for you, but here in the Governance Center, relationships are everything. Loyalty is everything. Disputes are disappeared through burial, not resolution. Vishwathi buried whatever animosity she had towards me, and she kept a detailed map for when she needed to dig it up again, which, as you know, was quite recently. Such a long letter, Amy, and here I am only talking about myself! How about you? The rising star of the New Society. I still regret never having you over for a proper dinner. Learning more about you, welcoming you into me and Vivi’s lives. Timothy. I'm never sure how to do possessives with multiple pronouns. Look it up and correct that sentence, unless it sounds weird. 'Mine and Vivi's lives?' 'Vivi's and My lives?' I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Just leave it. My new secretary, Timothy Dow, is terrific. I'm not going to make comparisons of course, because he's hard at work transcribing this letter, but we've found someone really special. I do mean that, Timothy. Vivi and I have Timothy over for dinner every couple of months, and I've learned so much about him. He’s a modern dancer. He trained at a rural haven called Jacob’s Pillow. He’s been teaching Vivi an exercise technique he learned there called Pilates. Vivi adores Timothy. She always loves artists. We even went to see him perform in a piece recently - by Merce Cunningham, who is apparently important. It was quite… good. There wasn’t a lot of dance or movement, but I think that might have been the point? Timothy, did I describe that okay? I hope Timothy isn't overwhelmed by our attention to his life, I don’t want to make the same mistake I made with you. I never want anyone I work so closely with to feel so unknown. Amy, you were just an assistant to me, and that was a shameful oversight on my behalf. I was too dismissive, it never occured to me you might have skills, or even passions, in other areas. I had no idea you were so interested in childhood development and education. It took you only, what, a year to get promoted from a project manager to Director of New Educational Initiatives? Supremely competent Amy. Yes, ma'am. A real rising star of the New Society. Or at least you were. I’ve looked over the proposal you put together for a new organization in Washington. I was giddy at the thought that the building reclamation project I put into motion would not only become fully realized, but that it could house an enormous new educational institution founded by my former employee. And I’d heard your idea was ingenious - fully dedicated to streamlining the separations of family. Watching Vivienne struggle with separation from her second child, I’ve been thinking a lot about counselling and treatments for distressed mothers and children, how much that could help them get through that process. And what of the births that happen naturally, outside of planned pregnancy centers? A child, naturally conceived, may live with parents for several years before finally being released to childhood development. I cannot fathom the emotional and spiritual anguish of those kids. There is so much good we could do, so much improvement we could make as a Society to ease family separations, to make the Non-tribal Act and the Age-10 Rule of 1942 feel less jarring, more natural. So I read your proposal with anticipation. I wanted to repay you, I suppose, by championing your cause, but I also really thought I’d believe in it. I'm sorry, Amy. I'm.... Timothy. It's already 2, and I haven't eaten lunch. I'll pick this up later. # # # Where was I? Timothy, do your best to stitch these transitions together I forgot my place. Here we are, Amy, hundreds of words into this letter which began with an espresso and ends with an apology. No, not an apology. Timothy strike that. Ends with a rebuke. And a touch more espresso Loyalty? Loyalty be damned. I threw loyalty out when I read your proposal, Amy. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe loyalty wasn't even there to begin with. Loyalty isn't blindly lifting up those you care about. Loyalty is critically helping those you care about. Your proposal included no psychological or emotional support for child-bearers, nor children. You offer drugs and reprogramming instead. There were schematics for machines that did not look like anything that could help, only hurt. A child is not a carpentry project you can keep carving and sanding. You also mentioned - but with no details, no location, no schematics, nothing really - a re-educational program for children and adults who violate the Age-10 rule. And you included enormous security budgets - security for what, Amy? Keeping the patients safe, or keeping the patients there? It’s a program for a medical prison. A proposal to imprison people for our failure to carefully rehabilitate them. This was not loyalty to me, Amy. You betrayed everything you knew about me. So I hope you’ll understand why I felt no obligation to push your plan through. I didn't even pass it along to the review committee. It wouldn’t have passed anyway. I did, of course, send you detailed notes on your proposal. I'm not saying the project is untenable, only untenable in the way you have it drafted. I had hoped you would be open to reworking it. Those notes don't matter now, do they? You're leaving the DoCD. You’re leaving to take an executive position in the private sector. I only heard about that by chance, you know. It was in a memo from the Secretary of Education that was forwarded to me by accident. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident. The position you took was unnamed, and so was the company. I tried calling you. Several times, Amy, but I never heard back. It's understandable. Transitioning out of a government job is stressful, I know that more than anyone. I wish you the best in the next stage of your career, I really do. I hope my critique of your proposal did not sour you on your otherwise fine work at the DoCD. I always enjoyed working with you, Amy. And I'll never forget that espresso machine. You and I had to haul that massive beast up three flights of stairs on our own. We bickered about which direction to turn the box to get it through the door. It took all afternoon to even set it up, and we were both wrecks. But at 5pm, almost on the dot, we enjoyed a nice shot of disgustingly strong coffee. We didn't say much. We were tired. We’d already snapped at each other enough, but I remember feeling such peace, such joy at having such a wonderful person to work with. We were quite a duo. So of course I thought of you this morning, while Vivienne and I enjoyed our daily espresso. Funny, though, this morning wasn't quite as uneventful usual. You can imagine how surprised I was to see a note about KR Development in the Business section. Did you know about this? They purchased a 150,000 acre plot near Chesapeake Bay. I haven’t been able to find out why, the article was short on details, and no one I know, no one who knows Karen Roberts, seems to know anything about it. That's a lot of land. And it’s near nothing. A highway that no one’s diven down in twenty years. What can they possibly want it for? For housing? For farming? A fishery? For weapons manufacture? It's a private corporation, I can’t get access to the plans. It appears to be fully internally-funded. I had Timothy do a bit of research to see what he could find. Seems like KR Development has - or had - a large contract to develop new schools and childhood centers with the DoCD, but they've recently opted out. Somehow it wasn't a shock to learn that one of the Advisory Board Members of KR Development is Vishwathi Ramadoss. In spite of Vishwathi's capriciousness, she can be a truly warm and supporting woman. In the past few years, my best moments with her were talking about you. She repeatedly told me how wonderful you've been at the DoCD, Amy. She's been a huge supporter of everything you've done. It’s interesting, because last time I checked you had pretended to be on her side, framing her middle management bureaucrat, only to turn around and stab her in the back, instead. Thank you again for that. But of course, she wouldn't have known about it would she? No. I received a steep fine for keeping sensitive government documents at my home. I could have been imprisoned for just that - which I was, indeed guilty of - but given the greater crimes those documents revealed, the tribunal let me slide with mere punitive remunerations. So you've still got a friend, a loyal friend, in Vishwathi. Her vote goes far, but it did not go far enough to get your proposal put before the council. She fought me hard about it, of course. Vivienne and I planned ahead this time, in case the showdown became personal again. We hired a private security detail. No one broke into our home, but we certainly saw our fair share of smoking men and unpleasant dogs. In the end, Vishwathi was gracious in defeat, but one thing she said in particular struck me as more than polite concession: Vishwathi said perhaps the Institute - your Institute - is better run outside of government bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is inefficient, she said, unable to keep pace with a growing economy and rapidly changing population. So. What does KR Development need with 150,000 acres along Chesapeake Bay? What could Karen Roberts and Vishwathi Ramadoss want with that kind of land? Karen, a woman known for weapons manufacture and paramilitary organization, and Vishwathi, a master manipulater - of both people and information... What could they want with such a large, secluded area of the world. What kind of secret could they keep there? They have money. They have muscle. What they need is a brain. An idea. A person to make something that can be profitable. That needs to be hidden. I pray I never meet a child who has to spend a single moment in your Institute, Amy. Who has to endure drug and brainwashing regimens, who cannot choose to simply live their life with all of their flaws, navigating the narrow hallways of the law. Your Institute makes it a crime to have feelings, Amy. I regret never having you over for dinner. For never learning more about you. I don't know if I could have changed your course. Probably not. You played your loyalty to both sides, and everyone won. We all got what we wanted and nothing improved. The Toronto office will keep their eyes on Chesapeake Bay. I hope - I have no reason to, but I hope - you are not involved in this at all. You, more than anyone, understand my distaste for Karen and Vishwathi. If my letter leans toward the accusatory, know that my tone comes from a place of care and concern for our citizens. The government is inefficient, yes. I do not disagree with Vishwathi on this point, but that is not a debit. That is a credit. Any large institution is an elephant, and the people are all ants. I want the elephant to walk carefully. To minimize harm, even if it slows the animal’s progress. If you continue with your work to build this Institute, please consider resubmitting your proposal to the Governance Center. I think it can be refocused as a center for emotional recovery for difficult separations rather than a punishment for those who are struggling with human instinct. We don’t approve many private sector educational projects, but I certainly owe you my attention and my respect. Best of luck to you Amy. Sincerely, Michael Witten Chief Policy Administrator Society Governance Center, Toronto # # # Timothy, delete any and all references to Vishwathi and Karen in there. And maybe clean up my language. I think I may come off as condescending, and I don't want to push Amy away. Better make it cheerier. You know, just keep the stories about Vivi and about dinner with you and about how i'd love to have her re-submit her proposal. Let’s keep our relationship with her - and Vishwathi - cordial. Also, Timothy, it’s proper to send colleagues a gift when they retire from public service. Send Amy a bottle of wine. See if you can find a 1940 Cabernet Sauvignon. Category:Transcripts